THERE is no twinning arrangement between Glasgow and Liverpool. Such an honour goes to the likes of Havana, Marseille, Rostov-on-Don and other places the Glasgow city fathers and mothers deem worthy for reasons best explained by themselves. Yet the bond between Scotland’s largest city and the pride of England’s north west is in reality so close as to make them like twins separated at birth.

Where to begin with the connections? With the river running through both, which gave the cities their docks and their sometimes shameful histories rooted in tobacco and slavery riches. Both are strongly working class towns, each battered in the Thatcher years, with the boys and girls from the black stuff and the dear green place on the receiving end of an equal going over from the Tories at Westminster.

The cities have a lot in common personality-wise, a certain gallusness, a “come ‘ed” attitude that can work for the place (see those Thatcher years) or against it (Hope Street in Liverpool can be about as “lively” a place on a Saturday night as Sauchiehall Street). Above all, there is the football. Both fitba' crazy towns, Glasgow and Liverpool have traded legends down the years, from King Kenny to Graeme Souness (to whom Glasgow can lay claim via his Rangers years). And of course there are the football sorrows, the Ibrox disaster for Glasgow and Heysel and Hillsborough for Liverpool.

The bond between Glasgow and Liverpool felt especially dear and close yesterday when fresh inquests delivered their conclusions on the 1989 tragedy at Hillsborough in which 96 football fans were crushed to death. The jury ruled all 96 victims had been unlawfully killed. Fans were not to blame. The police got it wrong in planning, preparation, and on the day of the match. The ambulance service got it wrong. No wonder there were tears and cheers among the families and others who had gathered in Warrington, Cheshire. After 27 years, they had done it. Against all odds, the families had begun to obtain justice for the 96, justice so long denied.

Every time the story of Hillsborough is told a gallery of the victims appears. To look at those photographs now is to be taken back immediately to another time and place. There they are, the head and shoulders pictures arranged neatly in a shocking number of rows, ages from 10 to 67. Most are in colour, some are in black and white, many are passport snaps taken in booths long before the digital days of selfies. All those fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins, pals, all the sheer bloody heartache of those left behind. There is never a right time for death to call, but how cruel to meet one’s end doing something so everyday as attending a football match, or going to school. On that day, 15 April, 1989, folk went out to watch a football match between Liverpool FC and Nottingham Forest at the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield and never came home again. And it was not their fault.

It has been important to remember that basic fact in the years since. There will be a lot said about the historic, legal aspects of the Hillsborough inquests. They are the longest of their kind in English legal history, for a start. The sheer number of witnesses called, more than 500, is remarkable. All this and more will appear in the media today. But at the heart of this tragedy, Britain’s worst stadium disaster, are people. Those so called ordinary people who are anything but ordinary to their loved ones.

One aspect of the fresh inquests that is worth dwelling upon is the sheer effort it took to have them established. For here is a sorry tale of establishment intransigence versus the efforts of the families, efforts that make Hercules look like a slacker. The original inquests took place in 1990-1991 and returned verdicts of accidental death. Crucially, there was a limit of 3.15pm placed on the period to be investigated, meaning anything that happened after that, all of which was linked to events before and during the tragedy, was not aired.

Almost two decades later, following campaigning by the families, the then Labour government set up a panel to look at the evidence and produce a report. This led in time to the quashing of the original inquests and the setting up of the new hearings, which delivered their conclusions yesterday after two years.

That canter through proceedings does not do justice to what the Hillsborough families went through to secure the findings announced yesterday. Over the years, every now and then, the relatives would appear on the news, usually outside a court in London, trying to get their points across in soundbites that would make the people watching at home, and the people in power, sit up and take notice. Some faces stayed the same over the years, others changed. Life went on for the families, births, deaths and marriages occurred but the deep, aching hurt, that burning sense of injustice, raged on.

The survivors told their stories, over and over, reliving the horrors of death occurring all around them. The images, bodies on advertising hoardings being stretchered off the pitch, the shock of the fans, players and managers, the sea of scarves and flowers afterwards, all found their way into the collective consciousness, stayed there a while, only to depart until the next legal challenge and a fresh appearance by the families.

No-one who is not among those families or survivors can ever truly appreciate what they have gone through. One can only hope it was some comfort to know that they were not walking alone. You do not have to have lived in Liverpool, or be a Glaswegian (although I should say I fall into both those categories), or even just be a football fan, to admire the achievement of the Hillsborough families.

As for Liverpudlians themselves, never underestimate the depth of feeling that exists to this day on Merseyside about Hillsborough. You may see glimpses of it occasionally, as when there was an eruption of anger when former Labour leader Ed Miliband made the crass decision to hold up a copy of the Sun, the paper which so cruelly lied about victims and those who went to help them. It is a feeling in with the bricks in Liverpool, up there with the Liver birds, the football clubs, and the ferry, as an intrinsic part of the city.

The Hillsborough story will go in different directions from here. For now, there is a lot to thank those families for. For showing that it is possible for injustice to be challenged. For showing that being working class should be no barrier to taking on the massed might of the legal and political establishment. For helping to improve conditions for football fans at stadiums here and around the world, making sure paying supporters are not treated worse than caged animals. For showing what dignity and courage in the midst of the most crippling grief looks like. For all those reasons, and more, this Glaswegian thinks of her sister city with pride today. Hold your head up high, Liverpool.